26 Logistics Quotes

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.

There is no reason at all why there aren't enough people to guard New Orleans and to help stabilise Baghdad.

They almost had to cancel the Oscars tonight because all of the designers and stylists are still in line in San Francisco trying to marry one another.

I have always used rather large execution squads, since I declined to use men who were specialists for shots in the neck (Genickschussspezialisten). Each squad shot for about one hour and was then replaced. The persons who still had to be shot were assembled near the place of the execution, and were guarded by members of those squads, which at the moment did not take part in the executions.

'I don't know why the players make such a big fuss about sitting in the first class section of the plane. Does that mean they'll get there faster?'

Troops without ammunition or food. Effective command no longer possible. 18,000 wounded without any supplies or dressings or drugs. Further defence senseless. Collapse inevitable. Army requests immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops.

Long before winter came the chances had been diminished owing to the repeated delays in the advance that were caused by bad roads, and mud. The 'black earth' of the Ukraine could be turned into mud by ten minutes rain - stopping all movement until it dried. That was a heavy handicap in a race with time. It was, increased by a lack of railways in Russia - for bringing up supplies to our advancing troops. Another adverse factor was the way the Russians received continual reinforcements from their back areas, as they fell back. It seemed to us that as soon as one force was wiped out, the path was blocked by the arrival of a fresh force.

Burning two thousand people took about twenty-four hours in the five stoves. Usually we could manage to cremate only about seventeen hundred to eighteen hundred. We were thus always behind in our cremating because as you can see it was much easier to exterminate by gas than to cremate, which took so much more time and labor.

The assault on Malta will cost us many casualties: But I am the one who wants it because I consider it absolutely essential for the future development of the war. If we take Malta, Libya will be safe. If not, the situation of the colony will always be precarious.

He was always hidden somewhere having a personal crisis -- always. One time I was in the room when he was talking to his manager, Doug Goldstein, about wanting the Goodyear blimp for the show. I said this as a joke -- even though it was true -- that the Fuji blimp was the largest blimp in the world. Axl was like, 'That's it! It's gonna be the Fuji blimp!'

Three factors defeated us in the West where I was in command. First, the unheard-of superiority of your air force, which made all movement in daytime impossible. Second, the lack of motor fuel - oil and gas - so that the Panzers and even the Luftwaffe were unable to move. Third, the systematic destruction of all railway communications so that it was impossible to bring one single railroad train across the Rhine.

The Mongols would have just turned around and left if they'd seen the public bathrooms here.

What is the point of spending such huge sums to bring a 200-lb.-body downtown when all you want of it is its eight-and-a-half pound brain?

I believed that crematoriums could be erected fast and so wanted to burn the corpses in the mass graves in the crematory, but when I saw that the crematory could not be erected fast enough to keep up with the ever-increasing numbers exterminated, we started to burn the corpses in open ditches like in Treblinka. A layer of wood, then a layer of corpses, another layer of corpses, et cetera. To start the fire, we used a bundle of straw dipped in gasoline. The fire was usually started with about five layers of wood and five layers of corpses. When the fire was going strong, the fresh corpses which came from the gas chambers could merely be thrown on the fire and would burn by themselves.

The reason why the foreign producer gets his produce to market cheaper, relatively, is this-that foreign produce is collected and brought in such large quantities and is sent in great masses to the market. That is the secret of cheap carriage...We must try to make our pounds of produce into tons-or must bring together a number of producers. If you small agriculturists can collectively offer a great bulk of merchandise to the railway companies, they will give you good terms.

In order to carry out orders from the southern army I sent 50,000 troops to Leyte, but due to air and submarine attacks half of them were lost.

I want us to start planning for dealing with pets. If evacuees are refusing to leave because they can't take their pets with them, I understand that. So, we need to facilitate the evacuation of those people by figuring out a way to allow them to take their pets. Bill and Ron, this may not be an issue for you in AL and MS, but it is a huge issue in LA. Please get some sort of plan together to start handling the pets. Thanks. MB.

All I had to do was to cross the river, capture Brussels, and then go on to take the port of Antwerp. The snow was waist-deep and there wasn't room to deploy four tanks abreast, let alone six armored divisions. It didn't get light until eight and was dark again at four, and my tanks can't fight at night. And all this at Christmas time!

He complained regularly about death-camp quotas not being fulfilled, about the problems of getting all French Jews to the death camps, and about the intermittent failure of the Italians to cooperate. As late as 1944, he played a leading, and open, role in the killing of Hungarian Jews, and in August of that year he reported that four million Jews had died in the death camps and another two million at the hands of the Nazis' mobile extermination units in Eastern Europe. At no point did he show the least compunction over the planning, organization and execution of what became known as the Holocaust.

Moscow, at the same time, represents the heart and the head of the Soviet regime. Beyond this understanding as its perception, it constitutes also an important military center. Furthermore, it is the main node of the Russian railway net, especially with regard to the lines that connect the west with Siberia. The Russians will surely employ massive forces in order to prevent us fro storming the capital. Therefore, I believe that we would have to aim at Moscow, all the available troops, via the Minsk, Orsha and Smolensk. If we are to conquer this zone before winter, we would have done enough for this year. Then we would have to think about further plans for 1942.